Just a peek

I started re-organizing my kitchen drawers Sunday afternoon. They aren't finished yet (more on that in a minute), but they are a far cry better than they were.

We have "builder basic" cabinets in our house. Nothing fancy and sort of annoyingly configured. When we moved it, I purchased cheap plastic drawer inserts from Menard's because they fit the drawers, not because they fit my stuff. Observe:

Things that drive me crazy here:

• At the back of the drawers (top of the picture), there's about 3" of wasted space because the organizer covers it with a flap of plastic. I understand this was the manufacturer's way of making them adjustable to different drawers--just cut to fit. But, I hate the idea of wasting that space.
• The spaces don't fit my stuff! In the top picture, the measuring cups were the real issue. My son (bless his little 11-year-old heart) is responsible for unloading the dishwasher, and he just doesn't take the time to stack the cups they way they need to be stacked to really fit in this drawer. In the bottom drawer, none of the spaces are long enough for a chef's knife, much less a bread knife! So, there are huge holes poked into the plastic so they can fit. 
• In some cases, there aren't enough spaces in the plastic organizers to properly sort things by type. For example, in the bottom picture, pizza cutters and can openers have to occupy the same space. In the top picture, it's clear that stuff just gets thrown into this drawer with little regard for the spaces at all. 

After about 30 minutes of work and less than $5 of materials, my drawers now look like this:

I followed the instructions given on the Lady Goats blog. She says no tools required, but I will admit that I used a miter box and handsaw because I wanted my cuts to be straight. As pictured, everything is just tension-fit, but I fully intend to glue things together this weekend (more on that in a minute).

What I love about this:

• Customized spaces fit everything I have perfectly. 
• Like items are together and don't invade spaces that belong to other types of items. (I still have two pizza cutters, but one is dirty because we fixed a frozen pizza for lunch. The empty space is for the kitchen scissors which were also dirty.)
• This project forced me to evaluate everything as I was refilling the drawer. We seriously did not need 6 spoons, 2 plastic syringes, and 10 tiny cups for measuring medicines. One of each should do it. I threw out any measuring spoons and cups whose measurements were unknown--you know, the cheap spoons and cups that have the measurements printed on them instead of molded into the plastic and the print eventually (sometimes very quickly) wears off. 

So, why isn't this project done yet? Despite being very well-organized, the drawers look....blah. I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to do yet, but I need to add color somehow. Either I'm going to paint the dividers OR I'm going to line the drawers with some kind of paper OR both. I can't find any Con-tact paper that I really like, so I'm looking at other things. Wallpaper would work, but I don't even know where to get wallpaper other than on the internet. Wrapping paper might work, but seems really fragile. Maybe wrapping paper with clear contact paper over the top.... Hmmmm. We'll see. I promise pictures once I'm done. I also have two more drawers I want to do, so stay tuned!